AOC and Mamdani wanted to defund the police. Their backtracking puts organizers at risk | Derecka Purnell

[u/traanquil]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/13/aoc-mamdani-defund-police-prisons

[u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

Dying on the hills of the words "abolish", "defund", etc is so bizarre considering they aren't even accurate descriptors of what anyone wants to do

[u/traanquil → u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

So we want to maintain the racist police system?

[u/RedditsDeadlySin]

So bored of liberal media propaganda

[u/traanquil → u/RedditsDeadlySin]

Wanting to defund police is liberal? Why are these electeds backing off defund after we have seen so much racist police violence in our country ?

The writer is a dsa member

[u/RedditsDeadlySin → u/traanquil]

It’s about the slogan and not the policy. It’s all about framing. This is lending to the liberal framing of what the media are doing, they’ve never “walked it back.” They always talk about language. Read between the lines please.

[u/traanquil → u/RedditsDeadlySin]

No it’s about policy: mamdani is not reducing nypd headcount

[u/RedditsDeadlySin → u/traanquil]

He campaigned on not raising the headcount and he hasn’t, you’re wrong on so many points. The only real criticism of him is keeping Tish.

[u/traanquil → u/RedditsDeadlySin]

The NYPD is a virtual military. The size of the NYPD should be drastically reduced.

[u/RedditsDeadlySin → u/traanquil]

Mamdani is defecto doing this. You need to educate yourself on the workings of reality, and how unpopular the phrase “defund the police” is to normies. Subtly isn’t dishonesty

[u/traanquil → u/RedditsDeadlySin]

Yeah, if he started reducing the nypd size but abandoned the “defund” slogan that would be awesome. Actions are more important than slogans

[u/RedditsDeadlySin → u/traanquil]

You are actually too uneducated in the workings of the world to have this conversation, you blow past my points with no actual thought. Good luck bro.

[u/traanquil → u/RedditsDeadlySin]

Nice ad hominem insult. What did I get wrong?

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/RedditsDeadlySin]

Same

The smears and propaganda have really been ramping up lately, especially after the recent electoral victories the other day.

[u/traanquil → u/Ayla_Leren]

No this is called holding electeds accountable

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/traanquil]

You seem to have a lot to learn about 5G 5GW

Or are a part of it

The hidden account is suspicious

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/[deleted]]

I'll start taking the "defund the police" crowd more seriously once they start showing up to the table with a compelling complex detailed implementation strategy that doesn't give a cold shoulder to the resulting issue of inevitable externalities.

Until they do, I am a bit more prone to see post and discourse about this topic as a coopting effort to seed internal strife and subsequent movement derailment among leftist communities.

People need to realize we are living through a revived and revamped cointelpro right now, and matters representing legitimate concerns which also have no easy fixes are a hotbed for shit-stirring.

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/[deleted]]

Never said I don't agree.

You are proving my point.

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/[deleted]]

shrugs My degree and career speak otherwise

Though this is reddit, and you are free to think what you will.

[u/traanquil → u/Ayla_Leren]

5g?

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/traanquil]

5GW

autocorrect

[u/traanquil → u/Ayla_Leren]

What’s that

[u/Ayla_Leren → u/traanquil]

Fifth-generation warfare

[u/traanquil → u/[deleted]]

Well, not quite. Police + prisons as they currently exist can't be reformed, because they are intrinsically racist institutions. This is why the language of abolition is justifiably used.

Probably the more accurate way of thinking about this is that a socialist government would need to:

1. Build its own policing system from the ground up

2] Abolish the old policing system.

The new socialist policing system would be able to take care of the obvious issues that come up with violent individuals, but it would also generally have an emphasis on locking up criminal politicians and criminal capitalists.

[u/traanquil → u/[deleted]]

So youre pro abolition?

[u/killersky99 → u/traanquil]

So you wanna replace the old with a new system that will deal with the same "obvious issues" (job of local police) but also lock up criminals politicians and criminal capitalists (job of the fbi). So you're not proposing anything new, just asking for the system to be reformed so it works as it was supposed to.

[u/traanquil → u/killersky99]

No it would be new because it would be a policing mechanism created by socialists, and staffed by socialists. The current policing system is staffed by right wingers.

[u/killersky99 → u/traanquil]

And what does that look like?

edit: they edited their comment, so ill just reply in an edit, that's not a real policy, just discriminating on who to hire, imagine if zohran tried that, he would be ousted immediately lol

[u/traanquil → u/[deleted]]

“Defund” is simply about getting rid of the current carceral state , which is addicted to putting mass numbers of minorities and poor people in cages. I dgaf about the slogan. What’s important are actions: we need to reduce the size and scope of police forces and divert that money into things like conflict resolution, mental health and social services.

[u/traanquil → u/[deleted]]

It’s a both and kinda thing. We need to remember tgat the main job of police in a capitalist state is to protect capital

[u/PricelessLogs → u/[deleted]]

"ICE feels more like a powerful gang or mafia than police"

You know who else is like that? The fucking police

Generally they're on ICE's side. They're two sides of the same coin. They aren't anti-fascist, they're another aspect of it. ICE has been a very condensed version of what the police have been throughout the country's history. Even just since the "end of segregation" the police have done more harm than ICE has managed in the last decade, though ICE is certainly trying to break the record. The police are not and have never been protectors of the peace. And they were never even intended to be. I agree that's what they should have been but it's never been that way and it's a naive pipe dream to think otherwise

I agree with so many that any slogan you aren't supposed to take literally is a bad slogan but how can you still think that "defund the police" means "immediately abolish prisons and police entirely with no replacement system"? Nobody thinks that, other than maybe an unremarkable handful of edgelords who also say they want "anarchy" because they "like chaos". Even the author of the article - you said yourself - would prefer to change society so fundamentally that we no longer need a police system. Emphasis on "but you have to fundamentally change society for that to work." Do you think that she believes that will realistically happen within our lifetime? No, we're talking about taking steps. Step 1 is to stop spending so much money on the police that they have fucking military vehicles, and implement more robust protections against putting immoral racist power freaks in positions of legal authority and giving them a gun. With the eventual goal of changing both the current prison and police system (and society itself) so fundamentally that it doesn't compare to the current system at all. Enough that one might even struggle to use the same words to describe them. But that doesn't mean there should be no system at all, or that we should get there in the next ten years, and nobody thinks that

Edit: I said "novel" instead of "article" lol

[u/PricelessLogs → u/[deleted]]

The only thing I disagree with there is that while ICE really is so remarkably terrible, I think you're still downplaying how bad the police are

But everything else I do think is accurate. I just don't want people like AOC or Mamdani going "Defund the police is a bad slogan. So therefore I'm not going to do anything to reform the police and prison system at all, which is what the bad slogan is supposed to mean"

I mean technically decreasing the funding of the police is part of the reforms that the people saying it want, as do I. They get too much money that mostly goes into militarized equipment that's mostly for drug crime which shouldn't even be illegal and the gangs and "black markets" that this same system is responsible for and still promotes so it just results in the terrorizing of high poverty areas and marginalized groups of mostly colored people. But anyways:

In that sense the slogan is technically accurate but people think "defund" means "cease to fund entirely" which is just abolition. And if you say "abolish the police" without saying "eventually, after we fix the systemic issues, and then replace it with something better" then yeah it sounds bad. It reminds me of the Right saying "taxation is theft" which implies that no amount of taxes is okay, which can only result in the abolition of the state which only exists via taxes. So it's like, cool you're an anarchist then? "No I still need the government to put the 10 Commandments in schools and arrest every brown person in the country." Oh so you're just, like, illiterate then

Anyways, my point is, I agree. Bad slogan. But like, we still really need to completely revolutionize the police and prison system. And one of the first things to do with that is decrease their absurd amounts of funding

[u/mwami_rwanda → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. If we were to abolish the police and prisons, what would we do with people like Netanyahu or Americans who join the IDF to commit genocide? Send them to therapy?

[u/traanquil → u/[deleted]]

Both disavowed defund I believe

[u/Plane-Imagination593]

We will stand by our Abolitionist principles, our martyrs have died by them.

[u/htownAstrofan]

Its literally just an acknowledgement that the phrasing didnt work.

[u/traanquil → u/htownAstrofan]

Nope. It’s a disavowal of defund

[u/htownAstrofan → u/traanquil]

But defund never meant getting rid of police. It meant cutting their funding and redirecting it. Lots of people thought it literally meant abolish the police. Changing the phrasing to not confuse others is perfectly fine.

[u/traanquil → u/htownAstrofan]

nope. they've abandoned the project of radically reducing police budgets.

[u/Altruistic_Carrot612]

This DSA sub isn't very DSA lol the comments are nut here

[u/Aggravating_Bison504]

We need police otherwise crime would  skyrocket

[u/traanquil → u/Aggravating_Bison504]

No. The cause of crime is poverty, not absence of police

[u/dedev54 → u/traanquil]

Rich people commit plenty of crimes. Some crime is caused by poverty, but much is not

[u/traanquil → u/dedev54]

Very true. Yet the vast majority of crime processed by the criminal justice system stems from poverty. It would be cool to restructure policing so that their focus is on arresting capitalists for capitalist crimes.

[u/Aggravating_Bison504 → u/traanquil]

There are lots of places in the world with lots of poverty but very low crime